The symbols themselves are arrangements of pixels on a screen which if understood are perceived as numbers. The actual process of addition that is perceived is immaterial and not perceived through your senses. It is perceived in the mind.

"It is perceived in the mind"

are you saying that what is perceived in the mind is thus the activity of the mind?then wouldn't that mean that no object of perception (i.e. addition) is needed?and if no object of perception is needed, then of what use are examples?...

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

are you saying that what is perceived in the mind is thus the activity of the mind?then wouldn't that mean that no object of perception (i.e. addition) is needed?and if no object of perception is needed, then of what use are examples?...

It is a mental object perceived by the mental faculty (mana-indriya). It is not physical. My whole point is that perception or cognition of mathematics is immaterial and non-physical. It is not perceived through your physical sensory apparatus (sight, hearing, etc...).

Actually, getting back to the original post (well, to some of it) the Buddha did advise his followers not to accept as fact something merely because he said it, but to test it out for themselves as a person tests the purity of gold.

That being said, (I love that phrase) there is much especially in the Mahayana texts and perhaps even more in the Vajrayana that one cannot prove empirically, as we say. A good example is the existence of hungry ghosts, or of an entire hungry ghost realm. How can you test that out?

One of the things I think may be unique about Buddhism is that one does not actually have to believe anything in the teachings that one cannot prove to one's satisfaction. One can give the teachings 'the benefit of the doubt" and still remain highly skeptical, and yet still practice meditation and the six perfections and generation of compassion and so on. So, it is not as though the validity of the teachings rests on accepting as fact, for example, that the Buddha was born from his mother's side and took seven steps when he was born and lotuses sprang up from his footprints.

For that matter, one does not really need to believe in rebirth. But I say this not because the concept of rebirth doesn't play an important role in Dharma, but because one's own conceptual definition of rebirth is really all one has on hand to begin with, and so, ultimately, to practice dharma, it is not essential that one accepts one's own (present) understanding (or perception) of things regardless of whether they are imagined or come in through the bodily senses.

In other words, I have no way of verifying rebirth--but this is not because it may or may not be true, but because my own understanding (and thus definition) of rebirth may be severely limited to begin with. So for example, if one's understanding is that Uncle Larry died and came back as my house cat, well, who knows? Maybe yes, maybe no. The fact of not really knowing actually makes it a moot point. proving it one way or another would not have any impact on one's dharma practice. More to the issue, however, would be whether "Uncle Larry comes back as a house cat" is really a good grasp of the concept of rebirth or not.

So, I guess what I am saying is that maybe validating the teachings, or finding a way to validate them is in fact not important, because any means of validation is ultimately suspect, just as much as is a body of teachings that were not even written down until a century after they had been given....

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

Huseng wrote: My whole point is that perception or cognition of mathematics is immaterial and non-physical. It is not perceived through your physical sensory apparatus (sight, hearing, etc...).

Oh, yeah. I'd go along with that.

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.

I can't help but feel that I'm reliving the creationists' spouting off "transcendent truths" and how they go beyond science because "science is only concerned with the material". This anti-science rhetoric you've got smacks of the normal religious person's argument when they're backed into a corner of facing irrational beliefs. Yes, in some way it is certainly possible that Buddhist metaphysical theories are true because, yeah, not everything is necessarily a part of the material world. But here's how I'm thinking about it, and just to sum it all up I'll reiterate and condense:

1. We can believe anything without evidence if we already have an underlying notion that anything is in a sense possible because our senses don't fully determine all of reality. ("brain in the vat", Descartes' dream world, etc.) Yes, there are perhaps realities beyond our five senses but in any case wouldn't it be prudent to assume, just for practical purposes at least, that our senses and thus the empirical observations we make with are the most probably the most accurate ways of determining reality that we know of, and thus can't we trust them more than abstract concepts thrown at us from antiquated religious texts? We experience things with our senses. The only reason we know about Buddhism is because we HEARD about it or READ (as in seeing) it somewhere or from someone. We use our SENSES in order to contemplate Buddhism. Buddha used his MATERIAL body in order to convey his ideas. People LISTENED to him using their sense of HEARING. In short, our senses are quite obviously the best way of determining reality and the reality we determine through them is probably, based on the evidence, a material, physical world. That's how we know that meditation-consciousnesses or jhanas take place in the brain, in our neural framework. That's how we know that when we feel empowered or spiritually enlightened by the Dharma it is dopamine being released in our brain causing us to feel happy. Everything we know comes from and is a part of the material, as far as we can directly tell. That isn't to say there may not be a spiritual world beyond the material. There may very well be universes outside of the material one that function in ways we cannot comprehend with our normal state of mind, but how can we infer this with absolute proof? Quantum physics provides some insight into this but to get as detailed as the Buddhist texts do about metaphysical realities seems like sort of a stretch, no?

2. Evidentialism would suggest that instead of believing in bodhisattvas, karma, rebirth, etc. and then working out the evidence as to why these things are true, that a more logical approach would be to learn and gather evidence and come to a conclusion based on that evidence. A priori knowledge clearly doesn't include bodhisattvas, rebirth, etc. We learn these things.

I would actually be very interested in reading about the Buddhist approach to epistemology since there doesn't seem to be a lot written on the subject.

The Omniscient one has declared that all there is to know is the six senses and all those senses are just mind.

Ikkyu, I'm not talking about truths; I'm talking about things that *might* be true. I'm not bothered about certainty, or about the fact that I'll be dissappointed if the dharma proves to be somehow false.

A lot of it boils down to me *not remembering* the thought processes that brought me to the conclusions about reality that I consider the most likely . I'm pretty sure I remember them being rational, however. For your part, you seem to be looking at Buddhism as if it didn't advocate emptiness, just as physicists do (apart from the Higgs-Boson set!)

"Removing the barrier between this and that is the only solution" {Chogyam Trungpa - "The Lion's Roar"}

Lemme try that last sentence again - "For your part, you seem to be looking at Buddhism as if it didn't advocate emptiness, while many physicists (let alone Buddhists) view reality as empty (apart from the Higgs-Boson set, perhaps?!)"

Moving on,

viniketa wrote:

PadmaVonSamba wrote:

Huseng wrote:Logic, patterns, numbers, language, jhana...

how are those not perceived through the senses?

In what way are they perceived by what sense? These are abstractions. For example, the sounds of language may be perceived by ears, the marks by eyes, but 'language' is intelligible only via the intellect (bodhi).

Maybe this explains much of Buddhism's apparent reduction of everything to Mind - If our senses are functional, then ALL our conscious perceptions are abstractions, but only if our senses are dysfuctional do we have to begin our mental activities with such abstractions, since trains of unconscious activities normally precede them. It's a commonplace to point out that what we sense is not some condensed essence of the sensed matter or energy itself, but a commodification of its dynamics within our world, mediated by our bodies such as to be intelligible to our minds. The more input we receive, though, the more we "know what's going on" - Consider the enormous number of sensed details needed to give one a well-founded 'bad feeling' about someone. On the other hand, where we have no sensory input at all, there's nothing for our brains to abstract from, so no abstractions form in our minds that appear as a result of this vacuum.

catmoon wrote:

viniketa wrote:

gregkavarnos wrote:When it comes down to it, all samsaric sensations are perceived by the sense organ of mind.

However, abstractions are not sensations.

Aren't they? If they are not sensed how do you know they exist?

Surely the cognition of an abstraction constitutes its existence - ?!? Padma, I take your point about sensing the workings of the brain, but language gets sketchy here, as I'm sure you'll agree!

Here, hopefully we return to more conventional examples of abstraction, such as number, which is a good example of what I (atleast) understand by that word - It's 'tied' to sensation, as I argued, since when we first learn numbers, they're always numbers of something we might perceive through our senses _ _

"Removing the barrier between this and that is the only solution" {Chogyam Trungpa - "The Lion's Roar"}

undefineable wrote:Here, hopefully we return to more conventional examples of abstraction, such as number, which is a good example of what I (atleast) understand by that word - It's 'tied' to sensation, as I argued, since when we first learn numbers, they're always numbers of something we might perceive through our senses _ _

Above sounds as if you are describing saṃjñā:

saṃjñā - (ideation, cognitions, discernment, discrimination, idea, notion, perception, conception, associative-thinking, conceptualization)This is the aggregate of ideas, namely the apprehension (determination) of "marks" (nimitta) such as blue or yellow, long or short, female or male, friend or enemy, and so on. I.14. Samjna is…that which grasps the marks (male, female, etc.) of an object (ii.34b-d). II.24 [AVA: ―This is that which comprehends, by combining conceptually the appearance (nimitta), name (nama) and the signified (artha) [of a dharma]…It is the cause of reasoning (vitarka) and investigation (vicara).

“The two mental states, sensation and ideas, are defined as distinct skandhas because they are the causes of the roots of dispute, because they are the causes of transmigration, and also by reason of the causes which justify the order of skandhas.” This question arises because the 2nd and 3rd skandhas are actually samskaras (see for example the panca-vastuka scheme) and could have been subsumed under the 4th skandha. They are taught as distinct skandhas because of the key functions they carry out as conditions for cyclic suffering. This point is also expressed in teachings regarding the order of the skandhas which exemplify the special importance of vedana [feeling] and samjna.(p. 24).

Buddhist epistemology (Pramanavada) reaches its most consistent formulation in the works of Dharmakīrti, a seventh century cittamatrin scholastic. A good place to begin is Foundations of Dharmakirti's Philosophy by John Dunne. Sangharakshita's Tattvasamgraha is also very useful in clarifying Buddhist epistemology, especially about the place of Buddhavacana.

May I be a poet in birth after birth, a devotee of the feet of Lord Avalokiteśvara, with elevated heart, spontaneously directed towards his Refuge, wholly occupied with the solemn duty of saving others.